110 - Charise Jewell- Helping People Learn to Thrive with Mental Illness .mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

Ruthless Compassion is a podcast about how you can turn your emotional shit into fertilizer for success and see your darkest moments as opportunities to transform into a powerful kindness warrior. If you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review wherever you listen.

Welcome, Charise Jewell to the Ruthless Compassion podcast.

Thank you, Marcia. It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, I'm very excited to talk to you. You have a very interesting story. So the first thing I always like to do is have my guests introduce themselves and just give a little thumbnail about who you are and what you do and how you got here today.

Sure, of course. I'd be happy to. I was born in South Africa. I lived there until I was seven years old when my family moved to Mississauga, which is just outside of Toronto, Canada. So I pretty much grew up in Toronto, and then I went to Montreal in Quebec for university and I studied engineering, mechanical engineering. And I also met my future husband while I was studying at school there. And we married shortly after school back in 2002, so long, quite a while ago. And we started our family. We had three kids, and in 2015, my husband was offered a position in Calgary, which is in Alberta, on the west side of Canada. And so we moved, we moved our family and started to settle there. Two years after we had shifted everything. I had an extreme manic episode, which was the first one I'd ever experienced to that degree. And I was diagnosed with bipolar one mood disorder. This came as a huge shock to me, even though I'd lived with depression through certain periods of my life, I didn't think I had a mood disorder or I never really suspected it, so it was hard to accept it.

And I spent basically a year kind of in shock and denial. And then I had my second manic episode and I was hospitalized again. And shortly after that, our family moved back to Toronto for my husband's work. And it was at that point that I started writing about it and really trying to understand and process everything, which eventually I was able to turn into a memoir that I had published last year.

That's like the journey. How old were you when you were diagnosed with bipolar one?

I was 40. I had just turned 40 years old, and that was part of my denial because I felt life begins at 40. This is just me having fun.

Yeah. And from my perspective as a psychiatrist, that's quite a late diagnosis. Most people with bipolar disorder, especially bipolar one, are diagnosed women at least are diagnosed in their late twentys. So it's very unusual for someone to be diagnosed in their 40s. Do you think, looking back, that you had any kind of manic or hypomanic episodes before that? Anything that looking back in retrospect, maybe that was something more than just being happy.

I think I had one hypomanic episode just a few months before my diagnosis. My diagnosis was in May, and in January of that year, I experienced similar symptoms. In hindsight, I had a lot of insomnia, a lot of energy. I was very happy, I was euphoric, and I think that lasted for maybe a week before I managed to just come out of it. I finally managed to sleep, so I didn't think too much of it because I'd always had a lot of problems with insomnia and I just thought it was something there was a Chinook in Calgary at the time, so it was beautiful weather. I just felt like it was something in the air that was making me happy and no big deal. But you're absolutely right about the late onset diagnosis. It was one of the things my first psychiatrist in the emergency room in Calgary, I think, kind of struggled to believe that I didn't have any alcohol or substance abuse problems because according to him and some statistics that I read, a later in life diagnosis has usually been masked by substance abuse. So that's how people kind of have cared for themselves over the years, by developing this dependency.

So he really was a bit taken aback that I was 40 years old, but I didn't have any kind of dependency.

So you're just a bit of a unicorn?

Well, in more than one way, because I always felt like that as a mechanical engineer too. So I felt like, well, this is just me being kind of special again.

How do you mean in terms of being a mechanical engineer?

When I was at school. So I graduated in 2000, and in my graduating class, I think maybe 10% of the students were women. And then I went into robotics, which there were no women working in my group at the time, 20 years ago. So people were kind of a little surprised to hear that's what I did.

And what exactly did you do in robotics? Sounds interesting.

It was great. My first job was working at a startup company where we built lab automation to use in-house. So we weren't trying to sell anything, we were just trying to basically study proteins. It was with the goal of drug discovery down the road. But the equipment I worked on, at first I started out by designing just the mechanical components for, if you ever see in video clips on the news or anything, those automated systems where they're moving petri dishes around or moving liquid and a pipatrum one from one test tube to another, PCR machine, if you know any of these kind of medical devices. Those are the sorts of things that I worked on, starting with mechanical design. And then we had a small team, so it eventually became I was working on software and electrical components as well.

So you're quite an accomplished person.

Yeah, I like to think so.

Let's go back to, here you are, you're in the hospital the second time. You've been a very accomplished person, quite the unicorn in your career, and now here you are with this diagnosis that I guess it's harder for you to deny after the second hospitalization, what happened then in your life?

Yeah, that was definitely a wake up call for me. So I was hospitalized, or I went manic rather, because I had not been compliant with my medication. I had decided, well, I had been in conversations with my psychiatrist where we talked about the possibility of weaning me off of my lithium, and I decided to jump the gun because I think I might have been starting to feel a little bit hypomanic even before I started to wean myself off of my lithium. However, because of that, I went into my manic episode within a few weeks, and I was hospitalized again. And the staff there at that point knew I was not compliant, and they already knew I was bipolar versus the year before when everyone had been trying to figure it out. And I had an MRI, like, I had multiple tests to rule out other things. So there was more kindness for sure the first time around. And the second time, there was really a lot of frustration with me, and I was frustrated with myself. But a lot of the staff at the hospital, they were frustrated by my requests or demands or basically anything I said, because, as you know, being a psychiatrist, one of the symptoms is pressured speech.

So I was trying to talk a lot about everything around me, and I was just smitten with everything I saw. And I started seeing some hospital equipment that I was really fascinated by because of my background as an engineer and also because it was so artistic looking to me because I was in these creative space. So I started talking about it, and they just wanted none of it. The staff and especially the security guards were so frustrated by me. I completely didn't believe that I'd had this experience as a robotics engineer. They didn't believe anything I had to say, and it made it that much harder because I felt like, wow, I'm telling the truth here, and nobody is listening to me. So I became more angry over time while I was stuck in the ER at this point. And it just was very shocking to me the difference between the first hospital experience and the second one based on my non-compliance and also their knowledge that I was bipolar. But it was also a wake-up call because I knew at that point, yes, I have to admit I have an illness and I need to stay on my medication, and I also never want to be back in the hospital again, so I have to do whatever I can to try to avoid that situation.

It's really a shame that you say that, because these are medical professionals and they should not be mistreating or disrespecting a patient based on the fact that they have a mental health diagnosis. That's a very disappointing, extremely disappointing thing to hear, and certainly not the way myself and the people that I know that practice. In my training, it was a very different thing. If someone came in and they were exhibiting mental health symptoms, they were treated with dignity and respect. And, yes, if they were potentially violent, there might be a police officer standing by in the room, but they weren't going to be manhandled unless they started throwing things or something. Right.

I should say it wasn't the medical staff so much as the security guards.

Okay.

Although there was some medical staff who definitely did not respect and definitely mistreated me. However, it was while I was in the emergency room, I was unlucky because I went to the hospital on a Friday afternoon and there were no beds in the psych ward. And then everything kind of shut down over the weekend. So I was kind of stuck in this limbo where the staff didn't fully know how to treat me. In the ER, even though there was a psychiatrist for a consultation, I wasn't being medicated properly. They didn't have the right tools or assessments, so I got unlucky. And then the security guards were some of them were nice, but, yeah, some of them were just awful.

That's very unfortunate. Well, it's reassuring to hear that it was not mainly medical staff who were mistreating you. And I suppose they need to train their security guards a little bit better in mental health. And that's something across the board that nonmedical people who are interacting with people with mental health, need to be trained so that people with mental health are not further traumatized. Because I think it's already traumatic to be in the hospital, to be having an episode and then to be mistreated is just that much worse. And like you said, you were so upset that you vowed never to return.

Yeah, no, it was very traumatic. You're absolutely right. And that was one of the things I asked my husband to file a complaint against the hospital for two incidents that happened while I was there. And the hospital kept asking him, well, what does she want? What's her request? What are her demands? And I kept saying, All I want is an apology because this should not have happened, neither of these things should have happened. And I want better training for the staff because they clearly don't know how to deal with patients who are mentally ill, at least not in the ER. It did improve once I was in the mental ward. But the same security guards throughout the hospital. So I think their position, they definitely needed more training. Now, mind you, this wasn't 2018, my second episode. So I'm hopeful that somebody listened to me, even though they flat out rejected my request. I'm hoping at least they reviewed it somewhat to have better training.

Yes, one would hope. Okay, so how long were you in the hospital actually, that second time?

That second time was ten days. They sped me up a little bit because for a few reasons, but one of them being, I think they didn't want me there. I think they were very aware that I had filed this and my husband had filed this complaint on my behalf. And the longer I stayed there, the more problematic it could be for them, because well, the first time, I was there for two weeks. So the second time, I just felt like things were a little rushed. But I guess at that point, we also knew I had the same psychiatrist, but we also knew what I had to do and how to move forward, and going home was one of the huge things to help me moving forward.

So, now I presume you're compliant with your medication.

Yes, I have been compliant since then, and I don't really even question it anymore. I used to dread it every night. I used to be frustrated that I had to take, I used to think. Why do I need this medication? I didn't need it for 40 years. And I would just argue with myself. And it was so demoralizing for that first year that I took it. And then, because I have kids, seeing them and how they reacted the second time around, that was incredible motivation. In addition to me not wanting to be in the hospital ever again, I didn't want to put my kids through it ever again. So that made me right away, okay, I need this medication. And I started listening, and even my psychiatrist had bumped me up because I was low in lithium. And when I got to Toronto, I needed to find a new psychiatrist, and that didn't happen for a short period of time. So by the time I found a new psychiatrist, I had toxic lithium levels, and he immediately backed down. But even still, I was like, okay, well, I need this lithium. Yeah, I've been taking it ever since with no plans to question it anytime soon.

You know what? I've been writing and talking a lot lately, just lately, about people's feelings about medication and how they feel like they should be able to just figure it out on their own. And because I guess it's a mood or a brain disorder, they feel like they have some kind of control over it. And I always tell them, well, when you're able to tell your pancreas to produce more insulin, I'll be very happy to let you tell your brain to produce whatever neurochemicals you need to balance out your mental health issues. I always say mental health is health, and if you're prepared to take medication for your physical health, you should be prepared to take medication for your mental health. It's all part of your health.

I 100% agree with you. Yeah, it took me a little while to come to that viewpoint, but I also think of it in terms of heart disease. And one of the things with lithium has always been or any medication. At first I was on an antipsychotic and I've never liked any kind of medication for anything, a mental or physical illness. So that was a notch against me. But one of the things when I was first trying to research lithium, I couldn't really find answers to the sorts of questions I had about it. And because to some extent drugs work differently on everybody, we don't really know long term effects, or at least I couldn't find any indication of future, like long term side effects that might happen with lithium. And perhaps I wasn't looking in the right places. And every time I've asked, I've had my Calgary psychiatrist and my Toronto psychiatrist, I've talked to both of them about it. It didn't really matter. It's not that my concerns didn't matter, but there's no evidence to suggest that there's anything terrible was basically their viewpoint, so that's fine. But there's also to me, no evidence to suggest that there's not anything terrible.

So one of the things that I had a problem with is this fear of the unknown for the future. And I had to come to terms with, you know. So maybe 20 years down the road, I don't know, there could potentially be some problem because of this lithium. But in the meantime, I've enjoyed 20 years stable as a result of my medication and the other things that I do. And if it was heart disease or something else, I wouldn't question it. It's just that it seems a little more like, yeah, you can opt out of it if you maybe don't want to do it because you maybe don't see the side effects quite so suddenly or as extreme come to believe how critical it is for me personally.

Well, I totally appreciate you're wanting to understand what the future might bring, but I think what you said about having 20 good years is really different. It's significant because imagine you might have very dire consequences of being in a manic episode and doing some very self-destructive behavior. People in a manic episode can do things that are really wild, so that preventing you from getting into trouble might be worth whatever potential risk and maybe.

There isn't even right? There was such a drastic difference between my first and second manic episodes. The first one was really fun. It was really pleasant. I was very confident, I was delighted with everything. Everything was beautiful. By the time I was starting to be just a little bit paranoid and irritable, I was already in the hospital. So I didn't see any extreme negative consequences of mania. So the whole year that I'm thinking, why am I on this dumb medication? Like, what was even so bad about that manic episode anyway? It was a real wake-up call when I had my second manic episode, and it was a dysphoric one, so everything was just awful, and I was angry, and I was paranoid. It was still mania, but it was just so horrible. And that really made me think, wow, I could really get into some trouble if I can't stay stable.

Yeah, you could end up in jail. A lot of people in prison have mental health issues, and they are untreated. And instead of ending up in the hospital, they end up in prison.

That's obviously awful. But even less severe than that, I read some memoirs of people who had very promiscuous sex and destroyed their marriages or spent all their life savings to buy really stupid things and just other ways that I could have really if I were a manic, I could really destroy things, even on a lesser scale in prison. It's very scary.

I treated a young person a few years ago who was a medical resident. They had an episode of mania, and they got themselves booted out of their residency program. They also lost their fiance because of what you talked about, promiscuity. And this was a very religious young person who was a virgin before they got sick. And then they were promiscuous, lost their fiance, lost their residency program. I ended up completely changing their medication because they had been in the United States, and they were put on some meds, and they came back home to Canada. I totally changed their meds, and fortunately, I was very happy that they were able to return to their program and complete their program and become a practicing physician. They didn't get their relationship back, but at least they got their career back and their life back.

That's horrific story, but that's a great testament to, like, if anybody should be understanding, I would really hope the medical community could be accepting that this is what happened and we can give this person another chance.

They did. And I was very appreciative of that school, of having that kind of open heart and open mind. But, yeah, there are really big consequences. So I think the risks, the potential risks are worth taking if you're going to prevent yourself from getting into trouble and if you want to get your life back on track. Right?

Definitely. And I could see with my children, I needed to be present and I needed to be functioning. Like, I couldn't keep just uprooting everything and throwing them into this limbo. And they were wonderful, but they didn't want to come to the psych ward to visit me. It wasn't a pleasant experience by any means. So I really could see, even on a more minor scale than destroying my family, I was still harming them. So that itself was heartbreaking.

Yes, I have interviewed people in psychiatric assessments who had parents with mental illness, and they described visiting their parents or having their parents be hospitalized multiple times as a traumatic experience for them. So I think it's very sensitive of you to understand that.

Yeah, I'm a sensitive person. It's very difficult to think back to those moments. I have specific memories that, yeah, they're really hard, and I don't know if my kids remember. My oldest, I think, remembers the most, obviously, but I really needed that kind of boost, as sad as it is. That really was one of the big motivating factors to make me determined to stay stable.

For sure. So here you are, you're in your 40s. You've just got diagnosed with this very serious mental health condition, and then you decide to write a book after being a robotics engineer. How did that come about?

Yeah, it sounds very strange. Almost like just a bipolar personality.

Yeah. Were you in a hypomanic episode?

It actually came about quite naturally for me. I've always enjoyed writing. Like, as a child, I used to write stories just for fun, and as I grew up, I wanted a practical career. I knew writing might not be the one that would provide a solid foundation for starting a family, so I kind of put it aside. But I always did write, and I've always written creative fiction or nonfiction. I used to write a parenting blog for a few years when my youngest was born, just as an outlet. So in my first manic episode, I'd been writing a book which is still really on the back burner. But in that mania, I had just decided prior to that mania that I was going to forget about being an engineer, because, I should say in Alberta, after we moved, I had assumed I would just find another job and it would be no problem. However, I was sorely mistaken, and I couldn't find any position as any kind of mechanical engineer at the time due to circumstances there. So because I was struggling to find a job as an engineer, and I had 1 foot out the door anyway, I just decided, let me just pursue writing and see what happens.

And then I went into my manic episode, and I wrote tons. And it was really part of the excitement because I was so creative and I was producing all of this wonderful work, and it actually was quite good. When I went back to read it much later, it wasn't like some of my later manic creativity, which was very difficult to understand. So I almost finished that book when I was diagnosed, and I then spent a year kind of depressed, and I would try to write. I couldn't write a lot in terms of that novel. However, I started to journal, so I always found it helpful for myself to journal through periods of frustration or through my emotions. I always try to write down the situation, what happened, as much detail as I can to kind of record it. And I read this Virginia Wolf quote. I'll probably say it wrong, but it's something like, "in setting it down, I set it free". It's something like that where that's how I feel about journaling my intense emotions. So I started doing that through that year, and a lot of what I wrote was actually more exactly what happened versus my emotions and my reactions to it.

So after my second episode, I was still journaling and I started to realize this is really, it could be something. It could be something that other people might find useful, as well as being very helpful to me. Because one of the reasons I wanted to really complete this book and have it documented was because of the way I was treated the second time around. I don't think a lot of people are really aware that this is the kind of treatment that a mentally ill person is often subject to in a hospital that's supposed to be caring for that person. So I wanted to really document it, to share this knowledge and as a way to kind of be a wake up call for other people and for the hospitals, especially that particular hospital, but for a lot of hospitals and a lot of security guards or even medical staff who need better training and a better understanding. And then one of the things that had really helped me along my recovery was to read other people's memoirs and to be able to connect with other people who had been in maybe similar situations or slightly worse, or slightly easier.

And regardless, it was very helpful. I just devoured memoirs for the first year after that second hospitalization when we were back in Toronto. So it really came about for a few reasons, but those were my primary goals, I guess.

I think creativity is such a healing thing. I have very often recommended to my patients who are suffering from mental health issues to find a creative outlet to help them release some of their trauma, some of their anger, some of their fear, pain, whatever they're going through to tell their stories. And I said, don't worry about making art, just use it for yourself. And if you make art on the side, all the better. But don't worry about it being pretty, just use that creativity as a way of healing. And they have found it incredibly healing. Some of them have gone on to do art shows, some of them have made movies. They've done amazing things.

I definitely agree with you there. And I think there's actually a surprising amount of creativity people don't realize. A lot of people don't think they're creative, like, even in cooking. I'm very creative in my cooking, and I find that's an outlet for me if I don't have enough motivation to write or to sketch or to do anything that it feels more like art. I at least try to do little creative things throughout my day, that even these small things just make a difference, I find.

So what have you learned now that you're a mom, you're a wife, you're an engineer, you're a writer, what have you learned having gone through this journey of developing mental illness as an older adult? Well, for mental illness, older not an older person, what have you learned in this journey?

That's a great question. I think one of the things I kind of reaffirmed for myself is the importance of sharing my story for myself to be able to heal. And I actually had learned that another hard way in my twenties, when I was first pregnant and I had a miscarriage, and it really affected me. I am a very sensitive person. I wasn't actually being sarcastic or joking, but I'm very sensitive. I'm very deeply affected by things. So I was very deeply grieving. My miscarriage when I joined a support group and being able to share my story and being able to talk about it openly, that was huge in my healing then. And then again, when I was diagnosed with my bipolar disorder, almost right away I started talking about it openly. And at first I was only sharing my stories on my Facebook account or just online for the most part. It was still quite embarrassing. I felt ashamed, but the more I talked about it, the more I was able to feel better about it and to accept that it's nothing to feel ashamed about. And I think for me, that was really essential to overcome that feeling of shame and stigma that's associated with the mental illness.

And the other thing that I really did discover in terms of my bipolar disorder as being helpful was I don't want to sound dismissive, but I really had to accept that if I put things in perspective, it wasn't terrible. It wasn't terrible for me to have bipolar one because it was manageable. I do have to work at it. I do have to take my medication. I have to stay very structured, very disciplined. And sometimes that's really not fun. Sometimes I really want to stay up late, but I have to go to sleep. So I do have to work at it. But if I work at it, it's manageable. It's not the end of the world. And for me, it was a little bit easier to have that perspective when I was in the hospital and I was walking through some of the halls and seeing some of the patients who they weren't leaving the hospital, right, they were there till the end of their lives. And that really woke me up a little bit too. This is not a death sentence for me, and it's not even as difficult as my miscarriage. So that also gave me a little bit of perspective to step back and say, okay, this is very difficult, but it's not the end of the world. Now, what do I need to do to kind of move on.

That's great to have perspective. And I think I didn't think you were joking when you said you were a sensitive person. I'm a sensitive person too, so I can relate. And I think that when you're sensitive, it's easier for you to tap into your creativity. But I was thinking how when you were talking about how you need to work hard to manage your condition, I was thinking about being a diabetic. They have to work hard around making sure their sugars are stable, making sure they get enough exercise. They have to take their medication. If they're taking insulin, they have to make sure they take their insulin. So they're managing their condition every day too, but they're living with it, and they're living just fine. But somehow there's no stigma about having diabetes and managing that. And there is a ton of stigma about having bipolar disorder and managing that. And really it's just one organ versus another. But for some bizarre reason, if it's in your brain, there's something defective about you, but if it's in your pancreas, you're fine. I still don't get it, but it's there.

I think it's kind of twofold. I think one reason is because there is a lack of awareness, because people have been so ashamed. Nobody has been talking about it up until recently. Right? So there's that aspect. But also it's the way society or media depicts people with mental illness versus diabetes. We're laughable, we're either violent or we're entertaining. Given those two options, no one's going to want to talk about having a mental illness because you're either this or that, and neither one is appealing versus the way someone with diabetes is depicted.

I think that's a terrific point, and I think you're right. I think the media really does contribute in a very negative way to these misperceptions about mental health. And people who are suffering are suffering even if they're euphoric. They're suffering because they're out of control of their impulses and they're prone to do things that are very self-destructive. So there needs to be, like you said, more awareness and more compassion so that people with mental illness are depicted in a more reasonable and realistic way and so that people have understanding about the situation as opposed to just thinking that they're criminals or that they're jokes.

Yes, I agree.

Yeah, that's a great insight. I'm so glad you shared that. So I'm going to ask you two questions. You might think they're funny questions, but I'm going to ask you them anyway. So the first question is, what's the worst thing about having bipolar disorder?

The worst thing? It's changed over the years. So I was diagnosed in 2017, so it's coming up on five years. And so the worst thing initially was getting used to the side effects of the medication. It was very kind of the reality, getting over the shock. But as I've accepted it and my medication side effects, they're very minor compared to what they could be. So I've either come to terms with them or it's just one of those things. As I've accepted those aspects, other things have come out. So I would say for a little while, the worst thing was the stigma and how I would see people don't really realize unless you have a mental illness or if you're a psychiatrist and you're paying attention to it in shows and in movies and even on the radio, people just use words all the time that for a period of time, it was very offensive to me. I really had a hard time listening to kind of jokes about crazy people or even using the word crazy. Nobody in my house uses that in everyday language, but everybody in the world uses it all the time as part of regular conversation.

So that was the worst thing for me for a while was that feeling I would get that I was being insulted just on a regular basis. Currently, the worst thing for me is the way people who care about me so predominantly my family, but even just like friends or people who know me, and for certain it would be people in greater society if I had any reaction from them. But it's when I react to something in a way that is I don't want to use the word normal, but perhaps typical for what the situation calls for, if I get upset about something that many people would be upset about, my family kind of reacts with like, oh, are you okay? And there's like this concern that it's because I'm bipolar and maybe I'm going to have an extreme mood episode and they treat me like almost like a child sometimes in these circumstances. And so on the one hand, I appreciate that they're recognizing that I have an illness and maybe I do need to be accommodated sometimes in moments of extreme stress. But on the other hand, it's very frustrating because it sometimes takes away from this is a real thing that's happening and I'm having a real reaction to it and it's got nothing to do with my bipolar disorder. So that to me right now is what's the most frustrating.

Yeah, I could see how that would be. I'm so glad you shared that because I think that would be very helpful for our listeners to just understand those kinds of things. So now I'm going to ask you a question you're going to think is really off the wall, but I'm going to ask you anywaywhat's the best thing about having bipolar disorder?

I don't know if I can really say that on your podcast. You can say anything. Okay, well, there are two things I think are the best things. So one is creativity. I don't know how I would be able to live my life if I didn't express things creatively and have creative outlets in most of the things that I do. And the other, it's really I guess passion is a good way to describe it. I feel like I have had a very rewarding sex life, basically, that I don't think is typical, certainly women who are mid 40s. But, yeah, I'm going to leave it at that.

I think that's great. Well, you know what?

Hopefully there are good things that come out of it, right? So it's not just a negative and side effects and whatever.

Yeah, I have other things that those are just my top two, but I definitely think it has helped me in my life more than it has hurt me. I think being sensitive has made me a much better everything, but the most important one to me is a much better mother because I'm really in tune with my kids a lot when they're experiencing any kind of emotion. And I think there are far more positives than people realize. And I honestly wouldn't change it, especially now that I know how to manage it better and I have better tools and awareness, I wouldn't change a thing.

So you have three children. How old are they now?

They are 9, 13 and 15.

Okay. And are you looking at them and sort of asking yourself about their mental health?

Yeah, a little bit. I first had my oldest child, I've kind of paid attention to his moods a little bit, and because I'm sensitive and I'm thoughtful and I'm attentive to detail, I noticed things about him that I kind of think over the 15 years, even before I had a diagnosis, I thought, I wonder if that's going to lead to something. So we've talked about it. I've actually talked about it with him the most. And I think my family, we're all aware that any of these three kids could have bipolar disorder. I don't think anyone's really scared about it anymore because we've seen, like, it is quite manageable and it could be worse. So I'm not really worried about it. I did take my son to a therapist long before I was diagnosed because he had anxiety. So, I'm aware that it's possible, but I think statistics are such that it's possible in any family and at least we kind of have an idea about what to do.

And you know what to look for, don't you?

Yeah.

Well, wow, that's quite a story. I'm very impressed and very pleased to talk to you because people are looking for you, like, looking to find your book and find out more about you, where would they go?

The best place is my website, so it's just my name. All is one word, ChariseJewell.com. And I'm also on Instagram, but my handle is one that I came up with when I was manic, so I'll spell it out. Maybe it's my handle on Instagram and Facebook actually are ReeseChaell. That's R-E-E-S-E-C-H-A-E-L-L.

Yeah, it does sound like something that you came up with in an altered state, for sure.

Yeah. A lot of what I do is very logical, even when I'm manic, and it actually really makes a lot of sense. But I know looking from after the fact, I always have to think, like, what was I thinking when I was doing this? What was my thought process here? A lot of it makes a surprising amount of sense, though.

For sure, well, that's the thing about creativity, right? It's intuitive.

Yes.

And is your book out right now, or is it coming out?

It is out.

And what's it called? And we never got to the title.

Yeah, it's called Crazy. And then the subtitle is Memoir of a Mom Gone Mad. And there are a few reasons I named it crazy, but one of them is really just to kind of force that word into the forefront to make people kind of think about why I'm using it and kind of challenge people on the idea of using the word crazy in regular conversation.

Fantastic. And just before we go, do you have a call to action for the listener, something that you would like them to consider or do.

So on the note of language and using words like crazy, my call to action is for people to listen to what they hear, both in regular everyday conversation and on TV or on the radio. And listen from the perspective of if you had a mental illness, how you might feel about certain comments or jokes. Sometimes they're not particularly offensive, but sometimes they really are. And it's kind of hidden in this shroud of humor, but it's really not funny for a person with a mental illness. It's really quite bullying. So my call to action is to pay attention to the language. And if you notice it and you feel like that's something to really reflect on, try to change your own language if you notice you're talking in a way that could really be deemed offensive to other people. I think language I mean, we know language is always evolving, and there are terms there are words that we use when I was a kid that were incredibly offensive and no longer are used in modern language. So, my hope is that words like crazier, insane, or similar language is going to one day at least be reduced, if not eliminated.

That's a great call to action. Well, thank you so much for coming on the Ruthless Compassion podcast. I think you've given us a lot of food for thought, and I just really hope and wish the best for you on your journey with your creativity and with everything.

Thank you, Marcia. It's wonderful to talk to you. I had such a great time here today, and thank you so much for inviting me. And if anyone out there is really struggling and wants to talk further, I'm happy to try to support and help. That's kind of the goal behind most of what I do. So please contact me through my website. I hope everyone just can feel a bit better about everything, really, but particularly in mental illness.

This is Dr. Marcia, Sirota. Thank you for listening. Please leave a review and your comments wherever you listen to podcasts. And don't forget to sign up for my free newsletter at MarciaSirotamd.com, where you'll learn about upcoming online events as well. Also, we love getting referrals from our listeners about future podcast guests, so please email us at info@marciasrootamd.com.